Further Reading

Since first running into TrackingPoint at CES 2013, we’ve kept tabs on the Austin-based company and its Linux-powered rifles, which it collectively calls "Precision Guided Firearms," or PGFs. We got to spend a few hours on the range with TrackingPoint’s first round of near-production bolt-action weapons last March, when my photojournalist buddy Steven Michael nailed a target at 1,008 yards—about 0.91 kilometers—on his first try, in spite of never having fired a rifle before.

But big, heavy, bolt-action rifles were only the beginning, with the underlying idea being that the company would scale its weapons both up and also down in size. And, last month, we day tripped back out to the Best of the West range just outside of Austin in Liberty Hill to lay hands on TrackingPoint’s newest set of PGFs, the TP AR 556 and TP AR 762. Unlike the big XS-series long rifles we fired last time, these newest PGFs are semiautomatic carbines—the type of weapon that the media usually (and incorrectly) refers to as "assault rifles."

But the smaller form factor wasn’t the only thing that TrackingPoint had on tap for our demo that day. Last trip out, the highlight was hitting targets at 1,000 yards; this time, we’d be aiming at targets a bit closer in… but aiming through a tiny wearable screen while looking backward, over the shoulder.

Misses and hits

What's a carbine?

We use the term "carbine" throughout this piece to refer to both TrackingPoint's AR weapons and to AR-15s in general, but the word might not be familiar to a lot of folks. By the strictest definition, a carbine is a rifle with less than a "full length" barrel; what "full length" means can vary by platform.

All carbines are rifles, but not all rifles are carbines. The US Army's M16 rifle (which is itself an AR-15 variant) has a standard barrel length of 20" and is considered a full-size rifle. TrackingPoint's AR-15s use shorter 16" barrels and are thus considered carbines.

A lot of things have changed in the past year for TrackingPoint. The company relocated its headquarters from within Austin to the suburb community of Pflugerville, constructed an enormous manufacturing and testing lab to scale up PGF production, shed some 30 employees (including CEO Jason Schauble and VP Brett Boyd, the latter of whom oversaw our range visit in 2013), and underwent a $29 million Series D round of financing. It also sold as many PGFs as it could make, according to Oren Schauble, TrackingPoint’s director of marketing and brother of former CEO Jason Schauble.

"We’re always oversold," he explained when asked about the company’s sales. The manufacturing lead time on some of TrackingPoint’s XS bolt-action PGFs has dropped down to a couple of weeks, but each rifle is a complex mix of components from a variety of manufacturers. The weapons themselves have a supplier (and in the case of the bolt-action weapons, the barrels and rifle bodies can come from two different suppliers). The Linux-powered scopes have seven different processors, including a TI DaVinci SoC. The AR semiautomatic rifles come from a totally different set of suppliers than do the bolt-action rifles, and so TrackingPoint has to juggle a broad, evolving supply chain to move its products out.

Schauble and the rest of TrackingPoint’s leadership consider their XS bolt-action rifles a success—though not everyone agrees with that assessment. Still, the fact that the company is selling as many weapons as it can make is significant. Prior to the introduction of the AR form factor, TrackingPoint’s primary customers were moneyed individuals—"one percenters," as Schauble characterized them to me. This was unsurprising, considering the price on TrackingPoint’s bolt-action rifles ranged from between $22,000 to almost $30,000. Although hunting clubs and law enforcement expressed interest, about 95 percent of the big rifles went to individuals.

Enlarge/ A production version of TrackingPoint's first-generation XS1 bolt-action rifle, which costs nearly $30,000 and is accurate out to 1,200 yards (about 1,100 meters).

Although probably 50 percent of TrackingPoint’s bolt-action buyers have also put down money on AR presales, the majority of the customers this time around aren’t high-earners—they’re just folks who like ARs. "They’re just as likely to be a VP at Stratfor as they are a construction guy who makes $30,000 a year and loves guns," elaborated Schauble. "A lot of these guys don’t look at it in terms of 'guns'—they look at it like, 'Hey, I’m going to get this WaveRunner,' or 'Hey, I’m going to get this motorcycle'—or this TrackingPoint Rifle," he said.

The ARs are priced much lower, too—the 5.56mm NATO entry-level weapon is right at $10,000. It’s still around 10 times the cost of an unaugmented non-PGF AR-15, but it’s also not out of the range of a middle-class luxury purchase like the motorcycles and WaveRunners Schauble mentioned.

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com